Laptop will not boot to SSD

[McNignog]

Hello HP Community:

I'm looking for some help with my HP Pavilion Laptop 15-cc665cl

I bought and installed the following M.2 SATA drive:

Samsung SSD 860 EVO 500GB M.2 SATA Internal SSD (MZ-N6E500BW)

Installed Windows 10 on it without an issue.

The laptop boots up to a boot manager and shows two volumes (Vol 6 & Vol 4)

Volume 6 is the new M.2 drive, and it boots to that, no problem, whether I let the boot manager time-out, or select volume 6. It will also boot to the old HDD, if I select vol 4.

I don't want to use the SATA HDD in there anymore. When I disconnect the ribbon cable, the laptop see no disk and doesn't boot at all.

Error: Boot Disk not found.

I enabled legacy support in BIOS, but the Laptop still will not boot. So, I removed the old HDD, completely, and put in a new HDD and connected it back to the mobo.

I selected the M.2 to be above the HDD in the boot order, under legacy boot order, saved and quit. Upon reboot, the M.2 drive is still not recognized, even though it has a valid OS and is showing up in BIOS. Secure Boot is off.

My goal is to get the laptop to boot without any HDD, or use the old HDD as a spare, ONLY. I plan on wiping the old HDD, eventually. I will not be cloning or recovering at all, so that is off the table.

This laptop will boot to the M.2 drive ONLY with the old HDD installed, and that is not okay. I should be able to boot directly from the M.2 drive, no strings attached.

Any suggestions?

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

Have you tried installing Windows with only the M.2 SSD in the machine? Seems you have some portion of the boot files on the HDD so you are not really booting entirely from the M.2 ever as you cannot boot unless the HDD is in the laptop. 

[McNignog]

Sounds like a plan. Let me give that a try, Huffer, and I'll get back to the thread.

[McNignog]

That did the trick, Huffer! You da man!

It now, solely, boots to the SSD, with the HDD attached. No boot menu. It boots in 5 seconds. Way faster than ever. I'm not sure why it created a dependency, before, but at least the issue is resolved. Thanks a lot!

[Huffer]

You are very welcome